The prize was awarded “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”.

Professor Peter Higgs has made a huge contribution to science and I am delighted to congratulate him on being awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. This brilliant achievement is richly deserved recognition of his lifetime of dedicated research and his passion for science. It is also a credit to the world-leading British universities in which this research was carried out, including the University of Edinburgh, Imperial and Kings College London.

It took nearly 50 years and thousands of great minds to discover the Higgs boson after Professor Higgs proposed it, and he and all those people should be extremely proud. This government backs scientific research and innovation and is determined to ensure that the UK continues to be at the forefront of the next great scientific discoveries, and I hope this award inspires others.